The abstract:
Teams tackle many complex organizational tasks and are often interdependent with other teams, as components of a multiteam system. A critical challenge in multiteam systems is how to promote information exchange across teams. By virtue of their specialization, teams possess unique knowledge needed by other teams, and likewise, are reliant on receiving the unique knowledge held by other teams. We experimentally investigate the role of social identity in interteam information sharing. The focus of identification (team- or MTS-focused) was manipulated in a sample of 84, 5-member teams working in one of 21, 4-team MTSs (N = 420 individuals). Findings show that proactive information sharing is an intergroup phenomenon - the identity foci of the teams on both sides of the exchange affect the process. Team-focused sources are less proactive in sharing information with MTS-focused teams, than with other team-focused teams. MTS-focused sources were slightly more likely to reactively share information with other teams. Furthermore, interteam information sharing predicts collaboration effectiveness - the more intelligence that crossed the team boundary, the higher the proportion of threats that teams successfully neutralized. Finally, we find that interteam information exchange mediates the effect of team identity.